The Internet's Role in the Creation of Idiots

So, I just finished reading the first few chapters of The Shallows by Nicolas Carr and I really enjoyed it.

Carr claims the internet is making us stupid. Hard to imagine right, after-all the internet is this all knowing entity and since it has become a part of our lives, one would assume we know almost as much as it does—wrong. Carr argues that the internet is stunting our “intellectual maturation” (Carr 40) and I agree.

Comparing my younger self to the way I am now is all the evidence I need to see how the internet is stunting my brain development. When I was younger I was not allowed to watch television, play video games, or even use the internet starting at 12pm Sunday to 2:20pm Friday (when I got out of school). My only source of entertainment was reading books. Although, this may sound crazy to some it was pretty helpful. In fact I was able to look deeper into the text and get a better understanding of what I was reading; it was so helpful that I was able to recall a book in perfect detail from beginning to end (no I am not exaggerating).

As I got older, the wall my mother built grew weaker and slowly started crumble; eventually allowing me to fully explore television, video games, and you guessed it--the internet. By the time I got to high school the internet became my own personal medium no longer did I read books that were not mandated by my teacher, and even then I was not able to sit and read. The internet recruited me into its world wide webbiness of mystery; teasing me with the ability to get information fast with little to no effort. As a result I developed the loss of concentration, the fidgetiness, and the urge to find something else to do whenever it was time to read (Carr  5). Even more interestingly, I was overcome with the same urges/feelings as I read the chapters due for class tomorrow.

The internet has done a great job at prepping us to read things fast enough to get a general idea of what the subject/text is about. However, with that fast reading comes a sacrifice; our ability to contextualize and understand the meaning of what we are reading. Carr is concerned that we could possibly be losing ourselves, turning into the brainless, mindless, and sometimes unaware human robots you see in sci-fi movies. Carr understands the importance of the internet, he says so himself. However, he is concerned that we are consuming what the internet feeds us in a state of distraction and are blinded by the various things such as surfing, chatting, and emailing; which is cleverly described as multi-tasking. It is for this reason Carr wants us to maintain what is left of our brains before it is lost in this new technological era of diversion.

Re-cap of Thursday’s Class (4/14/11)

I really enjoyed the way class was taught on Thursday. Taking specific passages from the reading and speaking about it class was commendable because not only were we engaging in discussion (which is something I love to do) but we were also given the opportunity to share our individual interpretation of the readings. I do not know how Professor Dean went about choosing the passages we spoke about but they were right on the money because they were all passages I needed clarification about.  I learned a lot especially in regards to the whole 'autonomy' thing Berardi spoke about. I also got a better understanding of Berardi’s critique about connection and conjunction. Not to mention the weird terminology (flexibilization & fractionalization).

However, a point that I do not think we touched upon in class is Berardi’s argument about history being seen as “an infinite series of bifurcations” and we are victims to “concatenations” (Berardi 8). This got me thinking about one of the essay questions, more specifically question 1. We are really quick to dismiss the idea of technology taking over humanity as mere fantasy but as I thought about what Berardi said, I began to question how much of a fantasy it really is. If we are already 'succumbing' to technology, putting them in an implicit position of power, who is to say that in 10 years technology would really be in power.

Lost In Cognitive Capitol

While reading chapters 4-8 I still felt a bit confused as to what Berardi was trying to argue. I knew he had it out for capitalism and those “ratchet” Marxist, but I had trouble trying to figure out his points. Is he trying to build a connection between autonomy and the role of capitalism in the collapse of democracy or is he attacking autonomy for opening the doors for “easy labor” and the threat of a technological takeover?

On page 76 Berardi states that “autonomy is the self-regulation of the social body in its independence and in its interaction with the disciplinary norm.” What I got from Berardi’s statement is that autonomy provided people with the right to say no to their oppressors (which is this case is the “capitalist system of domination”) and in a sense establish their own sense of self government. However, I did not really see how this would be able to have a positive effect on society because society thrives on capital and if people are saying no and doing as they wish, then capital will be threatened which will ultimately have a negative impact on us—right.

Berardi mentioned the “freedom of the enterprise from the state, destruction of social protections, downsizing and externalization of production, cutback of social spending, de-taxation, and finally flexibilization” (Berardi 77), as examples of the negative impact autonomy had. In addition, he blames autonomy for the flexibility of labor capital globalization brought along (Berardi 78). I must admit I had no idea what the hell he was talking about; he completely lost me at that point because I thought globalization was a good thing, and this ideology of “flexible labor” did not make sense to me. However, I realized Berardi was basically saying autonomy allowed for capitalist enterprises to replace what was viewed as human laziness with technology that can not only do the job without any resistance but within this new subject of time. After reading this my view on globalization started to shift just a little, because I was able to see globalization as the launching pad for a technological takeover. It was basically, if they do not want to work replace them with technology, technology does not bitch. And this frightens me.

Social Layer=Another Way of Saying “Beware, I’m Watching You”

As I read The Viral Me, I found it pretty entertaining at first, the subtle humor Friedman used was pretty cool. When I read about Jiggity’s plan to invent something that can turn the iPhone into this super hand held machine, that can do nearly everything except walk your dog (who knows, they might invent an app for that) I was extremely impressed. Primarily because we, by ‘we’ I am referring to humanity, has come so far in technology that these things can actually be created. No longer do we have to say “wouldn’t it be cool if (insert device here) could…” because the conversation shifted to “I am going to make (insert device here) do…”

However, when I got to the part where Friedman began to describe eevox’s social element as one “where you will be able to see all your friends all the time” I had to step on the brakes. Do not get me wrong I love my friends but that does not mean I want to be monitored, what is this—Prison Break? In addition, he mentioned the “coming era of the kinder, gentler panopticon, when all our lives will be transparent.” What the hell kind of shit is that, do I look like I want my life to be transparent, if that was the case I would have gotten a reality show, since it is being offered to everyone and their mother (I exaggerate of course, but you get the point).

If you think that was bad, picture my reaction when I read about Rapportive, “an application that inserts the social layer into every e-mail you receive.” In other words, when someone sends you an email (or vice versa) they are also sending you their life, from their occupation to their recent activities. Hell they might as well add their social security number and credit card while at it. Furthermore, it seems as if these people (Rahul, Jiggity, and the whole SiliPY-ONcONE Valley technoStalkers) seem to have no problem with it. Like what the fu…hell is wrong with them. It is like they are bent on turning the world into a peer-to-peer Neighborhood Watch program. We cannot win because it seems with each step man or woman takes, in terms of improving technology, they jump two steps ahead with ways to better ‘see’ us.

SLMA: Social Layer My ASS

Semiocapitalism Meet Labor

As I read chapters 1-3 of Precarious Rhapsody by Franco Berardi, I had trouble figuring out what Berardi was arguing at first because he was giving a lot of history and it threw me off. I understand he wanted to intertwine his own experiences as a way to provide us with an outlook about optimistic revolts against the capitalist institutions, but it took him a bit long to get to the point.

It took me a while and a lot of re-reading to get a sense of what Berardi was trying to but eventually I got a sense of what his argument was. Berardi basically argued that the new information age allowed for capital to freely exploit the labor of humans, thus moving from the worker being the unit of capital to time being the new subject with the “mobilization of the living labor of cyberspace. (Pg. 33-5)” In other words, the rise of new media and the ease of transferring information has allowed for capitalism to take dominance to a whole new level. This reminded me of the “Googlization of Everything” discussion we had in class on Tuesday. Google is using this cyber culture of “fun and games” to exploit the labor and coax them into implicitly trading their time under the false sense of freedom, when their time actually belonged to Google. Google is controlling the workers like puppets, resulting in a dramatic change of the relationship between labor and capital.

Google: The Big Brother I Never Wanted

I admit to being one of those people who view Google as an amazing entity that does no wrong. In fact it has come to the point where I refer to Google as tool, kind of like my own super dictionary. I no longer say “I will look that up online”  instead I say “I’ll Google it,” if you ask me a question I do not know “I’ll Google it” will be my response. So, one can only imagine how much of a ‘shock’ it was to read an article comparing Google to an undercover dictator.

Anyway, the articles really opened up my mind to things. It never crossed my mind that Google could be playing the big brother I never wanted—watching my every move, waiting to trap me in the predatory vender lock-in I try to avoid. I guess you can say I was “… [focusing] so much on the miracles of Google, [I was blinded] to the ways in which Google exerts control over its domain.”

The Goooglization of Everything by Siva Vaidhyanathan really stood out to me because I found it interesting how Google has developed into this monopolizing internet power with the ability to determine the sites that will be move on and the sites that will be shown the door. Google is basically American Idol for the World Wide Web. Additionally, the article addresses the way Google courts us into giving it the permission to monitor what we do online so they can trap us into the predatory vender lock-in also known as Google’s advertising auction program. It is because of this advertisement can now follow us wherever we freaking go. I can only imagine what Google is going to be capable of in a few years, monitoring our emails (if they are not already doing it) perhaps?

WWLS: What Would Lanier Say?

The Open Source Debate

After reading Digital Maoism by Jaron Lanier, The Cultural, and the Bazaar by Eric Raymond, I found myself torn between Lanier’s view of open source as a contributor to collective identity and Raymond’s view of open source as an opportunity for enhancement.

I understand Lanier’s criticism of the bazaar ideology Raymond seems to favor. However, I do not believe open source is a horrible thing. As Raymond points out, open source utilizes the free labor of individuals to improve software we enjoy. Additionally it has the potential of ending the “predatory vender lock-in” we face with commercial enterprises such as Microsoft, who charge hundreds of dollars for program updates (i.e. windows 7 ability to support virtual hard disks and improved performance on multi-core processors) Open software attempts to break this commercial loop and provide everyone with the opportunity to get what may not have been available to them.

On the other hand the bazaar ideology has the potential as Lanier would say “lead to the loss of originality and individual intelligence.” The reason is because people would no longer feel the need to tap into their own creativity because they are so reliant on the creativity of others which results in the dumbing down individual intelligence in favor of the hive mind. But then again universities such as MIT, Tufts, and John Hopkins view open source as a way to advance knowledge and education for students, so can it really causes individual intelligence to die down. Granted it opens the door for the sharing of essays, projects, and exams which can cause people to disregard their own intelligence since they can copy information from somewhere else, which is similar to the argument Lanier was making about the way in which information is put into Wikipedia. But with the rise of new technology and the popularity of new digital media I find it hard for students to get away with it.

Ultimately, the use of open source is debatable for both pro and con, even as I write this blog post I am still unsure as to which side I am on.